


please don't take my sunshine away

by contagiousiridescence



Series: grey skies [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst??, Canon Universe, F/F, Fluffish, One Shot, SuperCorp, Supergirl POV, does this make sense? nope probably not, honestly I don't really know where I was going with this but I had emotions okay, post 3x17, they're meant for each other okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 15:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14621991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contagiousiridescence/pseuds/contagiousiridescence
Summary: Supergirl doesn't know how to deal with her emotions.(and neither do I)





	please don't take my sunshine away

**Author's Note:**

> okay tbh I had absolutely no plan or idea for this, I was listening to Breathe Me by Sia and feeling a lot of things about SuperCorp.  
> Then this happened, somehow.

When Supergirl drifts over the windowsill of her own apartment and touches down on the empty, cold floor, she almost doesn’t realize that the apartment had been abandoned for nearly two weeks, sitting alone, waiting, the lights dark and the beginnings of a thin layer of dust across her coffee table and picture frames. Her boot heels are muffled by the rug in the center of the living room, and though it is halfway through midnight, she can’t seem to shake the feeling that the entire room has become dull and forgotten. Something is missing. For a breath of a moment, she thinks perhaps something of hers has been stolen, and she looks around, wondering why the sensation of loss feels so profound, but no item of value appears to be absent. She stands drenched in the shadows of her own apartment and breathes in the silence as if it might grant her an answer.

It doesn’t.

Supergirl shuffles to the couch, the cushions faded from the years of generous use. A throw blanket was discarded half across the back of it, draped partially over the arm and to the floor. She takes it in her hand and pulls it to her, despite that her suit does plenty to keep her warm.

Moon and citylight stream in from the surrounding windows. A breeze followed her inside, and it stirs some of the loose paper scattered over the counter tops in the kitchen; receipts, probably, maybe some recipes she’d tried or meant to. Bills, she vaguely thinks. Things she should probably look at sometime soon.

But she doesn’t move. Supergirl sinks into the cushions, which feel more stiff than she remembers.

“It’s only been two weeks,” she says aloud to herself, but the voice that echoes in the dark room doesn’t sound as if it cares to convince her. It’s only been two weeks, but the apartment around her smells of stale air and sluggish, far away memories.

There are faint sounds trickling in from the window. The hum of car engines crawling by her complex building, the mechanical bray of a horn somewhere in the distance, doors clicking shut while others slam into their frames, some preceded by sharp voices and then followed by sudden quiet. She doesn’t listen to the conversations that float in with the wind or the words barked with laughter from a block away. There’s too much noise in her own head to single out the voices traveling beyond her window.

Supergirl watches the drapes flutter against the brick of her walls. Something’s missing. She looks around again, this time with a little more energy than she managed when first passing into the living room, but yet again everything appears in order and as untouched as it had gone with her absence.

She frowns. Nothing’s missing, she thinks. Everything is accounted for.

But something’s missing. She can’t shake it. The weight lays in her chest, dragging deeper, pushing through her ribs to the delicate strain of her lungs. Her breath catches unevenly as she inhales and ripples out from her mouth in a soft, unsteady gust. There’s a pain welling up just beneath the weight. It coils, dull and aching at first, and grows sharper as it clenches in her chest and into her heart.

Something’s missing.

Some _one's_ missing.

Supergirl tugs the blanket higher, tighter, the skin of her knuckles straining white in her grip. It’s a soft blanket made of silver cashmere. She can smell it just under her nose; the must of disuse is heavy, but beneath it are familiar smells, of home and people and maybe even of some food that might have spilled on it some time ago. She closes her eyes. Her breath is harsh this time, loud and raw against the fabric, ragged as it catches in the shake of her shoulders. The blanket is pressed against her face, over her mouth, just below her eyes. There’s heat in her cheeks, burning behind her eyelids. It slips hot from under her eyelashes and stains the silver into slate.

The apartment looms, silent and unforgiving, as a soft, broken cry rises from beneath the blanket.

To feel everything and nothing all at once was something she’d thought too poetic at one point. There was too much swirling fiercely inside of her at any given moment to be named by words on paper and expressed by some clever twist of prose. It burned, sometimes low enough just to ache and others the roar of an inferno hell-bent on consuming the careful guards she’d built to keep it contained. To lose a family was one thing, a home and community another, and an entire _world_ far beyond any semblance of comprehension that sometimes even she didn’t wholly know how vast the chasm it left behind.

And other times yet, that chasm filled her, emptied her of thought and feeling until the numbness of everything was merely static left in its wake.

So to feel everything and nothing all at once became less and less poetic and more the simple nature of her own being.

The fists bunched through the blanket tighten painfully and press harder into her cheeks. The sound from the back of her throat is louder this time, stronger, and she cries it into the cashmere against her open mouth with violent shakes. There is too much feeling and not enough at the same time.

It’s a familiar state. She knows it. She experienced it before as a child, as a blossoming teenager in the face of death, as a young adult stumbling about her life in search of some purpose, as an alien who had lost her world and then was given part of it back, only to be snatched away again by the same jaws of death that haunted her out of childhood. As a hero and a lover, the two cleaved apart by duty, love, and the cruel blade of fate.

As a friend.

Every time, it swallows her, suffocates her, and spits her out with only part of her heart intact.

She wonders, briefly, if there is much left of her heart to break.

 

 

Supergirl doesn’t register the footsteps until someone stops at the door. She has stopped crying at this point; whatever the passage of time, she doesn’t know, only that the moon has shifted slightly across the sky, but the night remains dark and stifled by a sullen gravity. She remains on the couch, the throw still pulled across her body and still darkened by tears. Quiet cloaks the apartment. The tides of emotion have ebbed into deep corners, a lull she’s grateful for in a buzz of half-feeling that stymies the ache for the time being.

She feels a presence behind the door. A moment later, a soft, cautious knock.

It’s probably Alex. She doesn’t care enough to move from the couch.

Another knock. Then,

“Kara?”

A careful voice, gentle, verging on the cusp of timid.

It’s definitely not Alex.

Her heart swoops low in her chest. It’s reminiscent of the weight that had choked her of tears when she came home, and now it rattles in her chest again, ready to plunge her back under if she dwells too long in the comfort of her couch.

Supergirl slowly peels herself from the cushions. The throw falls in a heap around her boots, and she steps over it to move for the door.

The metal latch is cold. She slides it back with a _click_ , but stays her hand at the door knob. She stares at the door and doesn’t look through. She doesn’t need to.

When the door pulls open, Supergirl stands in front of Lena Luthor.

She, at least, looks surprised.

“Oh,” Lena says, and though the hallway is dark, there’s enough light from the hall window and Supergirl’s own apartment to illuminate her face in a glow of white. Her eyes appear gray, and as Supergirl watches, they harden into a look of impassive politeness. There’s a tick of displeasure in her jaw. Disappointment, if she cares to differentiate the two. She doesn’t know what plays through her own expression, but she feels too tired to think it would show anything else. Lena regards her only for a brief moment before glancing past Supergirl’s shoulder and into the dark apartment beyond her. “Is she home?”

There’s a lurch in her heart.

“No,” Supergirl says, “Kara isn’t here.”

It’s true. Something in the back of her mind alerts at that, as if it was an answer to something she’d been searching for, but the question was too far buried under layers of hollow emotion to recall what.

Lena stands at the door for a moment longer. Lingers, if Supergirl thinks about it.

“Will she be home soon?”

Supergirl turns to look into the apartment despite herself. It hasn’t changed at all since she came home, except for the blanket strewn over the ground.

“I don’t know,” she answers. It’s an empty answer. Lena knows it, from the small sigh Supergirl hears. Something in her twists deeper, like a knife slowly wrenching at the handle.

When Supergirl looks back at her, Lena is studying her with a guarded look. She had once been able to understand the thoughts behind Lena’s expressions, the emotion. Part of her knows she still can, because she can read the pain in the other woman’s eyes as easily as if she were looking through a mirror. But Supergirl ignores it, because it hurts to think of.

There’s a question in Lena’s gaze, and after a moment Supergirl understands.

“She lets me stay here sometimes,” she says quietly.

Lena nods. She’d inferred that much.

Supergirl looks back at the couch again. The window in the background is still open, still allowing the dead night chill to seep in. It’s dark and dusty and stagnant from a life unlived for many days. It’s not an inviting image by any means.

She opens the door wider, and steps back.

She doesn’t know why she does it, and evidently neither does Lena, because the young Luthor pauses for a long moment, caught up in the second surprise in the span of a minute. It’s not an offer borne from politeness, or even just a show of civility between them; there had been so little of that, it was hardly necessary now. It would have been pointless if Supergirl hadn’t meant it.

When Lena doesn’t move, Supergirl turns away from the door. It remains open as she walks through the kitchen, across the living room, and to the far window where the night outside has grown thicker with a hushed peace that Supergirl wishes could fill the space carved into her chest instead of whatever throbbing pain had decided to take up residence there. She stares out at the sky and the millions of stars winking through the citylight that hangs in a glowing haze above the buildings. She wants to wrap herself in the void of the night the way it did when she was small and suspended in nothing but a pod over a sea of stars. It had terrified her then. Sometimes even still. But now, Supergirl wanted nothing more than to lose herself in that sea. Maybe she would find whatever part of herself that had never come back.

She closes the window. When she turns around, Lena is standing in the kitchen. Her bag is on the counter, though she kept her coat on. The door’s closed. She’s wearing pants and a blouse beneath her coat, and Supergirl assumes it’s the outfit she must have worn to work. Perhaps Lena had stayed late at L-CORP again. Or maybe CatCo. Supergirl didn’t know anymore.

“Did I wake you?” Lena asks, glancing at the lights that remain unlit.

Supergirl shakes her head. “I was out late,” she explains, crossing the room again. She flips on some of the lights. Not enough to brighten the whole room, but it’s a soft glow and plenty for two people awake at one o’clock in the morning with nothing but stiffness and broken history between them.

Lena nods again. “As was I,” she says, though it’s unnecessary.

Supergirl hesitates to sit. She stands, watching as Lena makes her way for the chair opposite of the coffee table to the couch. For a moment she thinks she should leave and give Lena the space the other woman mandated since their relationship fell apart. Maybe Kara would come back, then, and give Lena the peace of mind she’d been searching for.

But it won’t happen. Kara won’t come back, regardless if Supergirl left or not.

Slowly, Supergirl returns to the couch and the throw discarded on the ground. When she picks it back up, the tear stains have lightened, but she can still see the shadowed blotches if she looks close enough. She pulls it around herself and leans back into the pillows.

The quiet returns. It’s not oppressive, like it was when she came home to a dead and lonely apartment, but tense like a string pulled taut between them. Lena still looks hard and unfriendly, but not angry, at least. Closed off, unreachable. She hadn’t come inside to talk to Supergirl, but to wait for Kara. Whatever she had to say must have been important.

Supergirl hides the tremble to her breath as she exhales and closes her eyes.

She thinks about Lena. About the kryptonite. About Sam, Reign. Ruby. The lies, the secrets, betrayal of trust.

The pain.

Lena had made the kryptonite. Not kept it-- created it. Manufactured it. Improved it, even, because the standard formula wasn’t enough to wake Sam from the prison of Reign’s mind. A truly brilliant feat, even if the end result could have nearly cost Supergirl her life. And in retaliation for the panic it caused her, she had accused the youngest Luthor of a terrible scheme.

But that, if Supergirl was honest with herself, hadn’t been the true cause of the ache that rolled through her now in a collision of heartbreak, denial, and longing.

If she’d been honest from the beginning, perhaps this wouldn’t have happened. This rift wouldn’t exist between her and Lena, between herself and Kara Danvers. Or between Kara and Lena, because Supergirl couldn’t bring herself to face Lena with another mask and pretend everything was perfectly normal. Not when there was kryptonite, and not when there were feelings under those layers of Supergirl’s emotions that drove her to want Lena in ways she would never be allowed.

There’d been too much. There was Mon-El, and his wife, and James, and herself, and the Worldkillers that she couldn’t stop. The emptiness within her heart had been there for some time. The place _Kara_ was supposed to be, the one who knew what it meant to be a beacon of hope and unfaltering faith. She never truly had a moment to her own to sort out whatever residual feelings she had and whatever was new and growing. The ones she moved away from, to the ones she should have embraced. They’d all been mixed together in a tangled mess of love and disaster, too tightly wound to separate into something vaguely understandable.

Until it was too late.

Her throat is tight and hot. It’s hard to swallow, but she tries, because although her eyes are closed, she can still feel Lena’s gaze on her. She can’t cry in front of Lena.

Her eyes burn. There’s wetness in her eyelashes, on her cheeks, and she turns her face abruptly away, her fist pressed over the side of her face to shield the tears from view. They’re silent this time, thankfully, and slip around the corners of her mouth and down her chin before disappearing into the silver blanket in her lap.

She thinks perhaps Lena doesn’t notice, for there’s a stretch of time that goes by without Lena speaking or moving.

Then,

“Supergirl?”

It’s whispered, though loud enough that Supergirl can’t pretend she didn’t hear. The concern in Lena’s voice is noticeable, but still guarded behind whatever wall of caution and distrust separated them from each other.

Supergirl opens her eyes. She takes a moment to wipe the wetness from her face with her hand, then does her best to clear her throat and meet Lena’s gaze from across the coffee table. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.

Lena is obviously uncomfortable. Supergirl notes it in the rigidity of Lena’s shoulders, the slight wideness of her eyes. There’s a bit of softness to her now that there wasn’t before. Somehow, the sight of it only makes Supergirl ache more.

“I should go,” Lena says. When Supergirl says nothing in response, Lena rises to her feet and moves toward the kitchen.

Supergirl wishes she wouldn’t. She wishes she could tell Lena everything, from Kara Zor-El to Kara Danvers and the superhero that was somehow both and neither of them at the same time, and all of the everything and nothingness that trapped them. She wishes she could tell Lena of Krypton and Midvale. Of Krypto and Streaky. Of Mon-El, of love. Of Lena herself.

But she can’t.

So Lena leaves, unaware of any of it.

And Kara sobs, hiccuping and unrestrained, into the silver blanket.

  
  
  
  
  


 

There are footsteps. Loud, hurried footsteps.

Someone pulls the throw from Kara’s face. She doesn’t have a chance to look up; arms circle tight around her shoulders, pulling her close into the shoulder of a black woolen coat. It smells of peonies and sweet perfume.

Of Lena.

She doesn’t think. The shards in her chest are painful to breathe around, so she buries her face into the neck of the coat and cries until her lungs grow tired of the effort. A dull calm follows shortly, and it shudders through her, bringing with it some semblance of awareness.

When she pulls away, Lena hovers close by.

There are tears on Lena’s cheeks, too.

“I’m sorry,” Kara says. It’s an automatic response, but it means more than anything she could put into words. It’s an apology long overdue for a multitude of things that couldn’t possibly be contained in so little. Maybe Lena knows, anyway.

Lena doesn’t answer right away. She studies Kara, her eyes flickering as she looks between Kara’s own. With one hand, she pushes away some of the blonde curls that had stuck to Kara’s cheek. It’s an intimate gesture, more than anything Supergirl and Lena have ever shared before. “I know,” she says finally. “I am too.”

It doesn’t fix anything, Kara understands. Perhaps tomorrow, they would even return to their separate lives, away from each other the way they had left it before tonight. The wound between them was too great, too deep, to mend with tearful apologies.

There’s something new in Lena’s eyes, Kara notices. Something...bright.

“Do you want me to stay?” Lena asks, and the inquiry is so unexpected that it’s Kara’s turn to stare, surprised and devoid of a proper answer. It’s an honest question, unbidden and earnest.

Kara looks around. Her apartment is still empty, but now, whatever was missing from it before had somehow restored itself. Maybe not completely; there were still pieces of herself to find and pick up, perhaps dust off and put back together, in time.

“I need to tell you something,” she starts, looking back to Lena. It’s a sudden epiphany, a direction she’d been too terrified to move in before. She’s still terrified, but she supposes it’s better than allowing herself to disappear under the pressure of everything and nothing all at once. It’s better than her own self destruction. The tangled mess still nestled in her heart won’t be unwound in a night, or maybe even a week, or longer. It might even, in the end, cut the final shreds of whatever she had left to hold on to.

But maybe, if Lena was willing to help, Supergirl could sew back the pieces of Kara that had long shattered and set herself back on the path to light and love.

Lena smiles. It’s been a long time since she’s seen it.

“Of course,” Lena says, sitting back. There’s only a fraction of a pause. “You can tell me anything, Kara.”

**Author's Note:**

> uh
> 
>  
> 
> Edit: come cry with me on Tumblr @contagiousiridescence pls


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